UPDATE
Dec 13, 2022 11:36 AM CST
They did it: Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California have made history in the quest to harness fusion, reports the AP. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm announced Tuesday that researchers achieved a net energy gain in a fusion reaction for the first time in history. It's a huge first step toward what could cheap, carbon-free power—and the end of fossil fuels—though it will likely be decades before the nation sees fusion-powered energy plants. Still, the breakthrough "will go down in the history books," said Granholm.
Dec 12, 2022 8:28 AM CST
The Department of Energy promises to announce a "major scientific breakthrough" on Tuesday. The Financial Times reports in advance that it is indeed a huge deal: Scientists have for the first time produced a net energy gain from a nuclear fusion reaction. The Washington Post confirms the news out of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, calling it the long-sought "holy grail" in the hunt for clean, cheap energy. The FT lays out the importance: "Fusion reactions emit no carbon, produce no long-lived radioactive waste and a small cup of the hydrogen fuel could theoretically power a house for hundreds of years." However, the stories make clear that we are years, perhaps decades, away from turning the milestone into a commonplace energy source.
“If this is confirmed, we are witnessing a moment of history,” physicist and author Arthur Turrell tells the FT. “Scientists have struggled to show that fusion can release more energy than is put in since the 1950s, and the researchers at Lawrence Livermore seem to have finally and absolutely smashed this decades-old goal.” New Scientist also weighs in on the formidable next steps, agreeing that it could take decades to figure out how to engineer large-scale fusion reactors and then actually build them. The Post notes that even old-school fission reactors take five years to build.
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Because of those hurdles, the stories say the milestone would not provide a quick fix to current concerns about global warming. "While fusion may be able to play a role in powering the second half of the 21st century, it is unlikely to be a solution to the immediate climate crisis," per New Scientist. Still, it's seen as a monumental achievement to mimic on Earth the carbon-free reaction that powers our sun. Earlier this year, Rep. Don Beyer, chair of the bipartisan fusion energy caucus, put it this way: "Fusion has the potential to lift more citizens of the world out of poverty than anything since the invention of fire." (More nuclear fusion stories.)
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